


Her Fault

by epersonae



Series: The Journal-Keeper [22]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Episode 66 Spoilers, Gen, Implied Magnus/Lucretia, Mindwipe, Regret, good people making questionable choices
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-11-21 20:39:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11365224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epersonae/pseuds/epersonae
Summary: Lucretia feels certain that she's doing the right thing. At first.





	Her Fault

**Author's Note:**

> I'm trying to? work? through? the pain?

After one hundred years, Lucretia’s journals took up a lot of space. They have their own room now, with indexes for the years. When the plan first came to her, she spent a long time sitting in that room before she did anything. There would have to be a system, if she really meant to do this. And that’s what most of her time was spent on: creating a system for reviewing a hundred years of journals.

For the first thirty, she still had the cross-referenced index that she and Barry had worked on, in their brief attempt to work together. Working with Barry had always been tense and awkward, but now she missed his incisive analysis. He saw things that she didn’t see; honestly, he just had a sharper mind for science. But she couldn’t tell him what she was planning to do.

They had rejected her plan. All of them. Like their plan was better. Who had her staff now? Some tyrant, probably. But apparently all this only worked, they could only keep the Hunger at bay, if they let these horrific artifacts destroy this universe from the inside. How was that any different from her plan, if in fact it even risked what Barry and Lup said might happen?

No, Barry would just explain it to again like she hadn’t understood him the last time. And Lup? Lup was gone, on her own quixotic quest to somehow both keep the relics in the world and keep them from destroying the world.

Everyone had looked to them, because they were the smartest about magic.

She closed her eyes. This wasn’t about arguing with Lup and Barry. This was about making things right. And so she went back to her journals, rereading every page, carefully marking the parts she would need to give to Fischer and the parts she could allow to stand.

Then, carefully, an armload at a time, she carried the books from the storeroom into her room. Double-checking. Walking down the hall carefully, nervously, avoiding all of them. She’s not going to put herself out again. She’s not going to explain it again.

That day, when she finally has gone through every line at least twice — even her journals from before the launch of the Starblaster, from her first anxious naive days as a recruit of the IPRE, all the way up into now. Yesterday, even, because of course she never stopped writing, not even when she had this plan that would involve feeding it all to Fischer.

“You’ll be so well fed,” she whispered to the voidfish. “At least this will be something that you can enjoy. It’ll just be us for a little while, bud. I hope that’s ok.”

And she looked at the stack of books — so many books — one. Last. Time.

“I guess we’re doing this,” she said, partially to Fischer, partially to herself.

It was quiet at first. Just books, and Fischer’s tendrils wrapped around them. She had always been uncomfortable with the idea of books being destroyed, even as a little girl, and more so now, having seen so many universes worth of libraries enveloped by the Hunger. But it was quiet, peaceful — the room lit by candlelight and the amazing colors of light inside of the voidfish.

Then…. Then she heard voices: was that Davenport, in the kitchen? It’s too far away to be sure, but a sick feeling hits her. And then shouting, even farther away: Barry, maybe? No, it’s fine, that’s what she told herself. Barry would be fine. They’d all be fine.

That’s when the door opened, right as she was dropping the very last book into the tank. Magnus. Her heart flooded with regret. His face. His eyes. A wooden duck in his hand? Of course. Of course he’s checking to see if she’s ok. The way he cries out “No” — what memory did Fischer just take, what was in that last book? Oh, yes, that beautiful blue binding was from the bookmaking artists of Legato. Fischer eats the memory of himself.

And the look of horror in his eyes faded to incomprehension, and she started babbling. She wanted — she wanted for him to understand, and he can’t, not anymore, and it’s  _ her fault _ .

“I love you, Magnus,” she says, “I love you all.”

**Author's Note:**

> There's a shout-out to my own fic, in so far as she has an index of the first 30 years as described in my Year 30 piece. (Will I ever finish that? Dunno. Maybe when less emotionally wrecked?)


End file.
